Your Shino/Kako brainstorm made me melt, hoooly hecckk <3<33333

Melt? I don’t know if I really contributed much to make someone melt, anon, but I suppose I’ll take your word on it.

I think a Shino/Shikako ship would be interesting to read because it would have… ah. Well, this is a benefit to me but I realize it might not be for others, but it basically has the aspects of what I like about DarcyxElizabeth Bennet without the cringing misunderstandings and biases.

Shino, like Darcy, is an eloquent man, intelligent and kind, but not exactly the suavest or most charming person (especially in comparison to his friends). Shikako, like Elizabeth Bennet, is a free-wheeling spirit, loyal to her family (and teammates) and absolutely cutthroat when the occasion calls for it; she’s not necessarily the most graceful in traditional social niceties, but she’s good with people when she wants to be.

So imagine the same meeting of two minds except, instead of in a weird back and forth pining/disgust melodrama it’s founded on mutual respect. 🙂

🙂 Sounds good, anon.

I think Shikako really needs a confidante, too, and part of me thinks that of the Konoha Twelve/Thirteen the most likely one would be Shino. It used to be Ino, but that was before the whole Sasuke Retrieval Arc leading to Orochimaru inside her head thing. (Before Shikako broke her).

You can still see remnants of that possibility–between Ino and Shikako, that is–in the post Land of Moon Arc especially, and the emotional depth of that scene is all the more poignant to me because of that. The almost could have been just T_T I mourn for it.

Shino, I think, would be a different kind of confidante. Not that he’s all robotic logic (as proven with the absolutely adorable relationship he has with his younger sister) but there’s a different foundation for the trust and truth that would be between them. Shikako might have, in a different time, told Ino the truth in a moment of emotional vulnerability. Shikako would tell Shino in a moment of vital strategy.

Most likely? If she ever did go against Danzo and needed a touchstone of sorts. With her family and her teammates and certain other allies, she would want to have some plausible deniability (like with the post Tsukuyomi–researching the names and faces and times of death of the Massacre just to see if she could find the incongruity and use that to bring up the suspicious circumstances). But if push comes to shove and she were to try to act on information that has no outside evidence (that she has access to, anyway) then I think she’d trust Shino with it.

Team Ten and Seven are both too close to home–she broke them or she changed them or she has far too much on them. Team Gai simply isn’t plugged in enough to be a touchstone–Lee’s family is very small, TenTen is an orphan, and Neji is a Branch member… if ever Danzo were to try to poach ROOT candidates it would be from their team. There’d hardly be any resistance. Team Eight’s a little… she and Kiba are essentially having a philosophical debate, and he would (at least initially) react poorly to the “I know a version of the future reveal” much less the “reincarnated from a different world where your lives are a manga.” Hinata is unsealed and against Danzo would be the only proof of why having the Caged Bird Seal has any benefit at all.

Shino’s family (at least his father) has experience with Danzo’s treacherous ways. And maybe Shino doesn’t know everything, but there’s no way that he hasn’t been at least obliquely warned against Danzo.

If it weren’t a strategic nightmare, I’d want to see Shikako, Shino, and Sai go on a mission together out of Fire country. After the per usual Lucky Seven twist, in which Shino notices maybe an exchange between the other two regarding their dancing around the matter of ROOT, or he notices something about Sai only, the three of them go back to Konoha. Shino requests to speak with Shikako about it, and she agrees and in the relative safety of the Aburame family home, she obliquely brings up the idea of ROOT and references Danzo.

A few more meetings and maybe one more strategically-a-nightmare Sensory Squad mission, this is the set up for a canon DoS Shino/Shikako ship.